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Friday, 10 May 2019

I
was in the Loire Valley and then Paris for 3 months. Everyone needs
to spend time in Paris! It is an essential part of anyone's
education. We stayed near Versailles and took the train to the heart
of the city most days. This was when Trump visited and insulted both
Macron and our war dead. The food, OMG, the food, is non GMO: We ate
constantly and still lost weight. Amazingly, Leigh has no problem
with lactose and gluten there. Health care is quick, uncomplicated
and about 20% of US costs. I met expats, UNESCO talent, a female Phd
from Egypt, so many fascinating and caring people. Video here.

Leigh
was called again by the plants to the Peruvian jungle in the
headwaters of the Amazon. Her work there was for 6 weeks. I
remained in the States.

We've
been to the North Carolina Outer Banks (OBX) in the summer on our
catamaran, and I wanted to experience the area during the off season.
I spent two weeks there in an ocean front home in December, visited
with good friends, and was treated to a genuine Nor Easter. It was
fabulous! Video here.

I'd
heard Asheville, NC was a place I had to check out, so I spent a few
weeks there also. It is an unlikely center of yoga, meditation,
chiropractors, craft beer and quaintness. The people are sweet and
welcoming. I highly recommend Asheville!

After
Leigh completed her plant medicine work, I joined her in Peru (my
first visit) in the Sacred Valley (near Machu
Picchu).
We rented a small adobe thatch roof house on a dirt road near a
small village an hour from Cuzco. It is in a valley at 10 thousand
feet, surrounded by jagged 14 to 19 thousand foot peaks.
Spectacular. Video here.

In
March we returned to our home in Laguna to put things back in order.
It's been almost two years since I was there and it was great to be
back. So happy to see our beloved neighbors again!

We
returned to Coddiwomple at the south end of the Chesapeake Bay and
spent a few weeks doing fixes and modifications. We're now back in
the water with a clean, functional, efficient boat. The plan was to
sail to Maine over the summer. Instead, we're doing something
radically different: establishing a home base at a marina in Deltaville, VA. There are literally more boats than people here.
The Chesapeake has 3600 miles of coastline and tons to explore in a
shallow draft boat like ours. This is where the United States was
born.

We
spent a week and half in a wonderful modern/restored log cabin in the
Shenandoah National Forest. In June we'll be on Terre-de-Haut,Guadeloupe, part of the Caribbean cruising circuit, for 3 weeks
checking it out before maybe sailing there ourselves. In July we'll
spend 3 weeks researching Massachusetts to Maine by car, also in
advance of maybe sailing up there. We'll be back in Laguna in the
fall.

Internally:

This privilege and honor of seeing more of the world continues to
shift and deepen my perspective. No matter what language, climate,
wealth or culture, the issues, the work we as individuals are here to
do is the same. Different circumstances clothing the same,
universal, stuff. Really feeling that we're all doing the same work
makes it easier to talk to people anywhere, in any language, at any
educational or socioeconomic level.

Being
in boat yards, connecting with driven sailors and deteriorating
boats, amplifies how temporary things are. I worked very hard on
renewing Coddiwomple, and now she's in great shape. The purpose of
the work is to learn, to grow, and eventually let it dissolve back
into the elements.

It
has been about two years since I started my education in trading
options. In my experience the conventional wisdom (let your winners
run, choose quality, options are risky, cut your losses, technical
analysis, buy and hold) isn't
true.

The
comforts of industrialization have been exchanged for our health and
vitality. In Peru I experimented with Wim Hof's (The Ice Man)
methods. It is startling how naturally responsive our bodies, and
immune systems, innately are to the environment.

Real
food (as we had in France and Peru), mostly without sugar, makes a
huge difference to my health and consciousness. I had no sense of
how influential it was. With no work at all, I've lost about 13
pounds, etc.

I'm excited that the fire
of my spiritual imperative has been brightly rekindled. I am
meditating daily, studying, growing rapidly, and having experiences
described in various traditions. When the time is right, I hope to
be helping people again in effective ways.